On tonight’s Real Time, it’s a liberal group with one conservative who will be discussing and analyzing the past week’s political events with host Bill Maher.

Mass. Senator Elizabeth Warren is the top-of-show interview guest. She vehemently disapproved of Donald Trump’s presidency, appearing on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper this week to discuss Trump’s first 100 days in office.

South Africa - their state flower is the bird of Paradise, and their flag was designed from it.

I was lucky enough to score a trip to South Africa and doubly lucky because I got to hang with natives of all kinds and colors. That makes it more possible to ask questions and integrate with them for a minute while staying safe and protected.

What this post is about is that whenever I mentioned Trevor Noah all faces lit up. I'm talking about the man on the street, the uber drivers, the folks who put me up, and people so poor they have to live in the townships which are the areas of town so desolate that the word slum is almost a step up. Where they squat for free except for their water and electric hookups.

Absolutely everyone's faces shone with deep pride. I never had to say the name twice.
(they all, by the way, speak English 'cept for a few percent, plus they speak several other languages)
Trevor Noah is a national treasure for them.

When they heard me say that I have the chance to watch his show 4 times a week, and how he tears Trump new ones and is gaining in ability and acceptance, they loved me for bringing them those news.

Having read Trevor Noah's book "Born a Crime" helped me a lot in understanding what I saw in Johannesburg, but I must say Trevor downplayed greatly what a city is like that is living in mortal fear. But then, the description of that is not the subject of this post.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Notching the first major achievement of his Presidency, Donald Trump has broken the world record for unconstitutional travel bans, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

In an official statement announcing the new world record, the White House called Trump’s second unconstitutional ban “especially impressive” because it came only thirty-eight days after his first.

“In addition to the world record for unconstitutional travel bans, President Trump has also smashed the speed record for signing them,” the statement read.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, touted the new world record in a press briefing that sometimes resembled a victory lap.

“After the first unconstitutional travel ban, a lot of people questioned whether the President could follow it up with another unconstitutional one so quickly,” a gloating Spicer said. “I think he silenced a lot of doubters today.”

In a tense moment, Spicer lashed out at a reporter who claimed that, by issuing two unconstitutional travel bans in less than two months, Trump had “set the bar too high.”

“The travel ban he is planning to sign tomorrow will be more unconstitutional than the first two travel bans put together,” Spicer snapped.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s claim that Barack Obama wiretapped him received a strong denial on Monday from the former President, who said to reporters, “Like I’d want to hear more from that fool?”

Obama said that, when he first saw Trump’s allegations on Twitter, “My first thought was, Only a narcissist on the scale of Donald Trump would think people want to hear more from him than they currently do. If anything, I think we’d all like to hear way, way less.”

He said that his wife, Michelle, agreed that the idea of his wanting to hear more from Donald Trump “was one of the funniest things she’s ever heard.”

“When I read her those Trump tweets on Saturday morning, she totally cracked up,” the former President said. “Whenever we’re at home and that guy comes on TV, I’m always, like, ‘Michelle, turn that damn thing off.’ ”

Obama visibly shuddered at the notion of intelligence agencies providing him with hours of recordings of Donald Trump talking. “Don’t even,” he said.

It has just been announced that former President Barack Obama will be the recipient of the Centennial John F. Kennedy Profile of Courage Award. The award was established by the Kennedy family in 1989, but this year’s award is especially significant because it coincides with what would be JFK’s one-hundredth birthday.
The award is named after Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize winner Profiles of Courage. The book documents eight senators in American history who prioritized principle over politics. The Profile of Courage award is presented annually to a lawmaker who embodies the spirit of those legendary eight senators.

This year a bipartisan committee of fourteen jurors unanimously agreed that Obama is the most worthy candidate. In the past, each recipient has been awarded on the basis of a particular decision that they made. For the centennial, the board decided to do something different. Obama is not honored for any one action. Instead, his entire career is recognized as having defied political interests and prioritized America and its people over all else.

On May 7, JFK’s daughter and former ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and her son, Jack Schlossberg, will present the prize to Obama in Boston. Obama will deliver a speech at the ceremony which is sure to be a beautiful tribute to the life and death of President Kennedy.
We agree with the committee that no one other than President Obama could fulfill the important role of accepting the centennial award in honor of the fallen President. Congratulations, President Obama. We supported your presidency from day one and we will continue to support your legacy.

It’s time to face this central fact, while facts still matter. The president of the United States is mentally ill, and not mildly ill either. He’s a hollow shell of diseased self-regard who’s been stuffed with alt-right ideology by some of the most loathsome opportunists in the political ecosystem — if you don’t recognize Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway as the kind of bottom-feeding creatures who breed in solid-waste lagoons, you really aren’t paying attention.

Some of us have been saying since 2015 that Donald Trump was better qualified for the madhouse than the White House. Post-inaugural events have advanced this argument beyond debate or objective denial. Thomas L. Friedman, the least excitable of anti-Trump columnists, warns us in this morning’s Times, “His lack of respect for institutions and truth pours out so fast, you start to forget how crazy this behavior is for any adult, let alone a president …” Note the word “crazy.” Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on Watergate helped to rid us of the last president whose mental health was precarious, can be heard on CNN declaring this a far worse case than Nixon’s paranoia, a genuine psychiatric crisis that has some of Bernstein’s best sources in the Republican Party sharing dark fears of chaos and breakdown. According to one of my best sources in Washington, the psychiatric department at Georgetown’s medical school is unanimous in its verdict that the president is not and has never been playing with a full deck.

Glenn Beck, of all people, calls him “dangerously unhinged.” Historians will argue about similar displays of instability by previous presidents. But Trump is our curse and our burden at this critical moment, as he and his eerie team of belligerent generals, reactionary billionaires and white nationalists dismantle a federal government that reflected, at times, the values and aspirations of progressive Americans. In order to replace it, apparently, with a banana-republic plutocracy that brings words like “oligarchy” and “junta” to mind, and wire-service photos of beribboned dictators with pencil-thin mustaches. This is not fanciful, or alarmist in the least. The overwhelming question facing us, of course, is “What the hell can we do?”

If I could tell you, in so many words, what to do with a legally elected mad president, I’d be the logical nominee for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Anyone who has attempted to commit a seriously deranged family member knows just how legally exhausting and emotionally wrenching it can be. A delicate business at best. Even Uncle Leo, who streaks high-school football games in a Speedo, has his rights, and his feelings. And Trump, an orange-crested lunatic who sits up there in the Lincoln Bedroom in his bathrobe tweeting hate mail at journalists and imaginary antagonists, is currently commander-in-chief of the most powerful military machine in the history of this sweet planet.

I just finished running the February contest, and the winner cannot step up and do the March contest.

I want to talk about the fact that important reasons and problems aside, and understood, we have the rule that:
The winner of a contest solicits and asks for a substitute him or herselfand here is a list of folks willing to help compiled a long time ago, pinned at the top of our photo forum.

What seems to be happening is that folks who run into problems with the "obligation" a win brings are then throwing the need for a solution into the midst of the group and bow out.
What then seems to be happening is that the same small handful of folks step up and solve their problem by volunteering. They do that in order to keep the contests going and for life in the photogroup to remain nice and smooth even thought the timing in their own lives may not be a lot better

I want to recommend a change in the pre-amble to the contest, where the host adds more clearly what the responsibilities of the winner are and have folks commit to them before they enter a submission.
Naturally family obligation or unforeseen happenings will intervene, but one can still find their own substitute, or ask someone to do the search for them.

On another note, while we maybe talk, how did you feel about folks having a chance to submit more than one photograph to help us have a contest when submissions are low?
I did not notice any resistance, or a change in the flow of the contest. Maybe we can keep the possibility open to continue it as the host may decide.